(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of updating instances and, more particularly, to a method of updating instances of a database displayed on a list in an interactive mode.
The present invention also relates to a method and apparatus for generating a fixed format document from a marked document, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for generating, from a marked document electronically created by a word processor, text editor or the like, a fixed format document which is required for a subsequent regular process.
(2) Description of the Related Art
Documents in an electronic medium can be used as a database by storing them. To use such data assets, keywords contained in the document may be displayed, or they may be updated as necessary.
For the database, likewise, only the instances for which the special condition is met in a field may be searched for and displayed, or the displayed instances may be updated as necessary.
In an electronic document, a document keyword corresponds to an instance in database, and a document corresponds to a record in database. Therefore, in the following description, the instance in a database includes the document keyword unless otherwise noted.
Conventionally, when the management of instances in a database including displaying and updating thereof is carried out, the displaying has been performed by a list, and the updating has been performed by a special-purpose input screen. For the displaying, the items to be displayed are specified in advance, and the instances in one record are displayed in a form of list, corresponding to these items. The display by a list enables the operator to refer to a plurality of records for the particular item at a time, and to look at many records continuously by a scroll operation. For the updating, an input screen in a ledger format, as seen on the screen for a card type database, is prepared. Through this special-purpose input screen, the instances are updated. This input screen displays the instance of each item for one record, so that the updating can be performed by correcting the instance of the intended item.
Generally, as described above, the instances in a database are displayed by a list, and when an instance is changed, an individual object, that is, a special-purpose input screen is used for each record.
As another updating method, a method in which the entire list can be updated may sometimes be used, as seen in a spread sheet.
With the method in which displaying is performed by a list, and updating is performed by a special-purpose input screen, however, if the instances are to be updated while being displayed by a list, the display screen must be changed into an input screen each time the updating is performed. Therefore, the efficiency in updating is poor.
With the method in which the entire list can be updated, all instances are in a state in which they can be updated. Therefore, there is a risk of inadvertently updating an unintended instance.
It is conventionally known to preserve a document with marks affixed to certain meaningful character strings contained therein, and among others, an SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) document is known as a typical example of marked document. In the SGML, a visually recognizable mark affixed to a meaningful character string is called tag, and the tag is inserted before and after the character string.
As a format of the SGML, ESIS (Element Structure Information Set) is known. The ESIS format is composed of a sequence of lines, and each line consists of the initial character of a command and one or more parameters. The command can be used as a mark and a parameter may be a meaningful character string.
By searching a marked document for a mark, a specific character string in the document can be retrieved. This allows a marked document to be used as part of a collection of data in a database, and the retrieved character string can be modified so as to be displayed on-screen or printed in desired format.
Usually, to create a document, an ordinary end user may use commercially available word processing software or a dedicated word processing machine. In the case of creating a marked document, however, end users must observe certain rules relating to marking. Therefore, when marked documents are to be created, the marking rules must be previously notified in writing to all end users concerned so that the marked documents may be created in conformity with the rules.
However, even if the rules are notified in writing, it is difficult to have all end users obey the marking rules, because the understanding of the rules and the skill in producing documents differ from user to user. As a consequence, an administrator or a proxy therefor must make the necessary corrections to the marked documents collected from the end users concerned, which requires infinite labor.